Under the Poppy (51 page)

Oh, a pity indeed. Perhaps Hector will pay for the funeral? Though I suppose it’s my father’s debt—he never expected a servant to act on his own initiative.

Prompted by the spirit, yes. One wonders what spirit. When we spoke at the club, he seemed useful still, if somewhat excitable. But the task now is to move the counter correctly, and obtain the correct result for—Isobel? Ah, Isobel,
for indeed I was weeping: for Benny gone into hiding or worse, no word from him for a full week now, no sign. And M. Bok in some foul “custody”—released he will be, there is no doubt of that, but angry, and abused by his connection to our house…. For the moment it was more than I could master. I hid my face, I felt the tears seep cold into my gloves.

Then Javier took my hand, my good hand, and pressed it in both his own: he has never touched me so before, even when I was young.
Take heart,
he said, looking into my eyes, and in that moment I saw him as perhaps young Liserl had: a man of both gravity and gaiety, whose own heart might contain a multitude of tenderness, alongside a certitude of force.
Your cavaliers—I speak, of course, of Dusan and myself—are planning an entertainment. Quite diverting, on several counts! And you may invite some others if you please.

Shall we have Hector?

Most assuredly.

And I remembered what M. Dieudonne had told me:
It is not the strings that really signify, Madame. It is the motion.
Perhaps this motion will draw us back together, Benny and me, and if Javier will look to my father, and M. Dieudonne safely see to the strings… I felt, then—I cannot say what I felt, it was a singular sensation: as if I had swallowed an elixir, or some very strange champagne, to make me put back my head against the cab seat, and quote, in a voice I did not know I had:
“What would it pleasure me, to have my throat cut/ With diamonds? Or to be shot to death, with pearls?” That is from
The Duchess of Malfi.…
Tell me what is in your mind.

Perhaps you, too, are a player at heart, my dear! Dusan will have to put you on the stage.
He knocked on the window, to make the driver turn the horses.
It is time for you to have another dinner party. Dusan suggests it be a beggars’ ball.

It is a mask such as the street children sell, a rough-paper boar’s head with tusks of chicken bone, the ears crooked and peaked like a cat’s, the whole tied on with a gaudy ribbon: “I tried to dress in a tradesman’s disguise,” says Pinky, out of breath, “but I hadn’t the proper coat. Or hat. What do tradesmen wear? Miss Bell, you simply must stop laughing.”

Lucy tugs the door closed behind him as he pulls off the silly mask, to show a smile beneath for both Lucy and Pimm, there in the musty Blackbird; the pantry ceiling has sprung an unknown leak, one can smell the seeping water but not trace its source. Pimm salutes him with the thick-clawed hammer—“Pleased to see you, sir”—then returns to his handyman’s duties, up the ladder that Pinky helps to steady, steadied himself by Lucy’s smile in return: “We’ve missed you,” Pinky nearly as scarce these days as lost Benjamin since “I daren’t be seen here—the old stick is still livid, M. Georges has been to see him, you know…. Any word?” She shakes her head. He bites a knuckle, Benjamin’s gesture, then passes up to Pimm a greasy little coil of wire.

It is the talk of the city, this scandal, though the spoon, as they say, is not quite long enough to stir the stew, what news there is is sadly incomplete: Is young de Metz really exiled by his father, or run off on his own, or merely on some disgraceful binge with a new lover? as the former one, that dark fellow, has been detained, some say for the usual reasons where Benjamin de Metz is concerned—the old tales of the German and the riding master bruited once more for spice—while others insist the familiarity is not so much with the young master but the mistress of the house, and perhaps the account books, as well; with a man from the streets, of such indeterminate provenance, what perfidy could surprise?

Old de Metz is in the city, but staying at his club, bespeaking some larger friction with Isobel de Metz—whom no one has dared to ask directly, not even Fernande; though Isobel’s demeanor is not one of dejection, or even defiance, but instead a glacial assurance, so perhaps there are other factors in play. Certainly the Guyon family has chosen to brazen it out, Christobel Guyon seeming not at all dismayed to be on the cusp of marriage to a man gone missing or fully beyond the pale. Instead she openly takes the air with Mme. de Metz, the two of them seen together shopping on Dressmakers’ Row, being fitted for similar new gowns (narrow skirts, sleek tobacco-brown silk and green garniture, like the palest, frailest tendrils of spring on the earth: very nouveau).

And—if the latest rumor is to be credited—another man has now taken up residence at the townhouse, though his presence is too intermittent for absolute fact. But he has been glimpsed there, surely, a smiling shadow in a top hat, the puppeteer from the Twelfth Night affair, if you please! Whether old de Metz resents, deplores, or even knows of this new outrage to propriety, he has done nothing to prohibit it; perhaps that is due to his failing health? And now Isobel mounts a party, a masquerade, a “beggars’ ball”—to show off her newest acquisition? To announce her brother’s departure? or his engagement? or some madness of her own? So the tongues wag on.

There is other talk—more private, and taking a much cooler view—of de Metz
père et fils
. It has become an article of faith in many quarters that Isidore is not well, though how long he can function, and in what capacity, remains a subject for intense debate, the young heir still too much an unknown quantity to factor, especially now. What is not debatable is the drift between de Metz and Hector Georges, who has fashioned himself into another sort of paterfamilias, assembling a civilian cadre of those who find the usual routes of change and fortune too slow to travel, and seek, in the modern way, to bring speed to the process. Chamsaur is his ally here, it seems; and Guyon an adversary. Others, in other cities, take sides, or take note, all noting that a lynchpin indicator, the calm and solitary Arrowsmith, seems to be remaining neutral in this contest, holding to his stated posture of retirement. One evening he dines with old de Metz at the club, the next with the daughter and the Guyon girl, at the Guyon home, then with Georges and Chamsaur and Guerlain, who is allied by blood to the Guyons, but through the bank a closer friend to Georges, and what greater friend can there ever be than lucre, itself always independent of the fray?

And if, after these dinners, Arrowsmith climbs into a cheap barouche, to sit in a club where young ladies perform in damp gauze and feathers, and let the gentlemen buy them drinks, one may take that for a mark of an aging man’s foolishness, or loneliness, the little mistress still unreplaced in his affections if not his bed. If there are meeting rooms as well in these kinds of clubs, very few of his peers have ever seen them; though Jürgen Vidor was one who knew, and Hector Georges another, habitué of the Poppy as he had been. Matters were somewhat more straightforward in those days: there was a war on, of course, with all the clarity that open bloodshed brings, and many unusual alliances were temporarily formed.

Still a man like Mr. Boilfast, say, is equally at home in situations of war and peace, or ambiguous combinations of the two: as is Mr. Arrowsmith. As is M. Dieudonne, Istvan privy to their backroom conversations, night or day, stropping the planing knife on a length of leather, drinking whiskey from a china cup—

“—while he sits in a fucking box, doing what? Improving his French? It may not seem a proper jail to you, but to Rupert—”

“Everything that can be done has been done,” says Mr. Arrowsmith: because for this moment it is true. Though Commissioner Sellars has proven surprisingly intractable—he has bet his all upon one horse, never the wisest plan—still he shared readily the address where M. Bok was being held: a dull brick building in one of the duller
rues,
backed by a tannery and a disused ironmonger’s, an outpost where the municipal overlaps the military; Georges’ new territory, in short. There are several other guests in that building, none of whom are known to each other, none of whom signify in the current situation other than M. Bok. But for every guest there are three guards, and every window is grated in iron—

—like the little iron safe, now safely removed to a new location, where both Boilfast and a fellow of his acquaintance, a sad lean man with delicate fingers, examined it for possible entry, coming at last to the sadder conclusion that
A cheap box like this, you can’t fire her,
said the sad lean man.
Any good screwsman’ll tell you, the cheaper the box, the faster it burns.

And the items inside?
asked Mr. Arrowsmith, to which the sad lean man did not even bother to reply, beyond
Getcher a locksmith, sir,
as he shared with Boilfast a look of professional pity; though that had already been tried, several local fellows protesting that the mechanism was as old as Methuselah, and
Made elsewhere,
said the last of them, perhaps justifying his failure.
Mebbe in China or somesuch?
to bring, when consulted, Istvan’s distant shrug—“We found it at the Poppy, we used it at the Poppy”—more distant still when Mr. Arrowsmith references the original keys: “M. Bok has one, I understand, but we ought not draw attention to that fact by trying to retrieve it. The disposition of the other,” eyebrows faintly raised. “Was that entirely wise, Dusan?”

“It was at the time.” More whiskey, into the cup. “How does Puck stay so well-hidden, do you think?”

“Perhaps he has gone farther than Paris,” says Mr. Arrowsmith, a fear he will not voice to Isobel, though he knows it gnaws her heart with every hour that passes: the boy could very well have drunk himself into a broken neck, a robbery, a tumble through the darkness into some sewer or creek, one can drown in a bowl of soup with proper assistance…. He was last seen by the majordomo Helmut, who gave his tale with Isidore there beside him, that man in pain so great it is painful to behold: The young master became very quarrelsome—he was intoxicated—and went to the stables to sleep, he said. I left a lad to watch him, but within the hour he had gone—which will complicate matters unpleasantly, if Isidore should die before the young man is located: for Guyon and many others; for Mr. Arrowsmith himself. And if Benjamin is dead—

Now to Dusan he emphasizes that “Many people are looking for our young friend, and he will be found; there is no doubt of that. So be easy, and concentrate on your part—”

“I know my part,” softly, seemingly only to himself, though both Mr. Arrowsmith and Boilfast share a look, Mr. Arrowsmith gently rapping his cane, the griffin-headed cane, to draw Istvan’s full attention: “The players take the stage when the stage is ready, you of all people should know that. Especially a performance of such delicacy,” to elicit Istvan’s nod, his shrug of apparent assent that neither can fully believe. Boilfast politely withdraws so Mr. Arrowsmith may speak to Dusan alone, and try to impress upon him the scope of the business in which they are together engaged: “You see only the hem of the skirt, here, there is a deal of struggle in play—”

“I’ll not ask your aims, only do you know them yourself?”

“Peace and plenty. As always.” Istvan says nothing. “For today, I have a colleague in the Urals who keeps me current, and another in Cologne—”

—though Istvan himself flies closer to home, a triangular path between the arcades, the town house, and the Blackbird, an open path, his pursuers having been recalled since Rupert was taken. It was at the Blackbird, in fact, where Otilie—in a rather alarming bonnet, red plaid bows and painted silk—shared the name of a young lady whose sister is a kitchen maid at a kind of private gaol, hard by a tannery, whose goodwill she, Otilie, was prepared to access
For a friend,
with a sultry gaze at Istvan.
Or are you still “off kissing just now,” sir?

With a bawdy wink straight from her days in the Blue Room, Lucy made her exit, and what passed between the two no one can reliably say, though Istvan reflected, while refastening his trousers, that it was a singular way to break his fast, and one he will not repeat…. Only for Mouse.

Otilie proved as good as her word and prompt with the proffered introductions: see Istvan in coat and grocer’s apron, riding a delivery cart piled with leeks and onions, beside a delivery man who, for a bit of money in his own pocket, allowed him to stand in the alley beside that cart, while he himself delivered to the kitchen maid he is fucking a little blue muslin bag, no wider than two fingers, inside which lay a ring wrapped in newspaper, a signet ring that she—for her own bit of coin, and a promise of the delivery man’s undying love—dropped into the lap of a man sitting in silence by a grated window, a man who felt the ring as if it were another’s touch, felt it like a charge through his body, felt it so intensely that for a moment he could not react, could only stare out the window to the street, where a figure stood waiting beside a cart, a figure who kissed his fist to the man at the window; his pure stillness, watching, was almost frightening to see.